


Triangulation

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: eleven plus two makes three [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: First Dance, Fluff, Multi, OT3, Snow Ball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Mike, El, and Will attend the Snow Ball. Will tries not to be jealous until they make him realize that he has no reason to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> More shameless fluff. I don't even care, I love them and I want them to be happy together.

The Snow Ball is a week and a half after Will finds Eleven hiding out in Castle Byers. A week and a half of this strange feeling percolating inside him whenever the three of them are together in Mike's basement, a week and a half of Joyce and Hopper figuring out where El will stay. The first couple of nights she sleeps in Hopper's rarely-used bedroom, but she doesn't need many words to express her preference for more people around more of the time, and she moves in with the Byers family before the week is out. Joyce is slightly terrified to suddenly have a daughter when she's been a mother to sons all this time, but Eleven is much better behaved than either Byers boy, and Will's pretty well behaved to begin with.

Money is tight for the Byers family, it always is, but it doesn't seem like a sacrifice to give up a couple of luxuries in exchange for the real luxury of having El's wide eyes and soft but steady voice and quiet presence bringing something inexplicable but already necessary to their lives. Will and Jonathan share a room to give Eleven a room of her own, which Will is privately glad about-- he's been having nightmares since he came home and Jonathan is very good at waking Will up before the nightmares reach the point of absolute terror. It's a little cramped, but neither of them spends too much time in their bedroom these days. Will and El have spent every day after school at Mike's house, usually but not always with Dustin and Lucas too.

Nancy's hand-me-downs fit El with a little alteration, and Nancy still has the dress she'd worn to her own Snow Ball a couple of years earlier, pale blue with a full skirt, which looks almost ethereal on El's slender frame. El's hair has grown out a little, still shorter than Will's and Mike's but not buzzed any more, and Nancy does El's makeup for the dance. Will thinks El looks more like an elfin princess than Nancy ever did for their campaign. When he tells her that she looks pretty, she lights up brighter than their Christmas tree.

Jonathan drives Will and El to the dance at the middle school, dropping them off just outside the gymnasium, but El hesitates to walk through the doors. "What's wrong?" Will asks, holding the door open and watching her stand there with her breath fogging the air instead of coming in. El doesn't answer him, just bites her lip and breathes in and closes her eyes as she crosses the threshhold into a room decorated past recognition of what she'd done there not even six weeks before.

Mike's waiting for them, of course, standing a few feet inside the doors. He sees Will first and his expectant look becomes a smile, but when El walks into the room it's almost cartoonishly hilarious for Will to watch the hearts in Mike's eyes when he catches sight of her. Only almost, because to be honest Will's starting to realize that he wishes Mike looked at him the way he looks at El and that's never going to happen. He's always happy to see Will, yeah, but it's not the same.

Will knows that it's just proving what all the bullies say about him right, the nasty things his own father's said about him, but he realized after escaping the Upside Down that Troy is never going to be as scary as the Demogorgon and that there are so many more things that hurt worse than words. He's trying not to let the way Mike and El look at each other be one of the things that hurts. He wants to be happy for them. It's not hard to be sort of happy for them, really, because they don't push him to the sidelines when they're together. El's never at the Wheelers' house without Will, and El and Mike don't go into the blanket fort without him even though they could easily just not invite him in-- but they always invite him, even though he gives them the chance not to, every time. Even though they only fit if they squeeze together. Even though they've got hearts in their eyes for each other, sometimes they put Will in the middle when they're in the blanket fort, and it's the safest he ever feels these days, caught between them.

There's no space for him between them at a dance, though. There's not usually any space for him at a dance anyways. Before El, there was no reason for any of their friend group to want to go to a dance. It was always more fun for the boys to beg one of their parents to rent a tape and make some popcorn than to go to any sort of after-hours school function. That's what Dustin and Lucas are doing right now without them, neither one of them totally sanguine with the dopey way Mike looks at El most of the time and not wanting to witness how gross and sappy they'd get at the dance. Even though it hurts, it pulls hard on that tangled feeling in his chest to watch them swaying together to the music, Will can't quite make himself look away.

At least the music isn't bad, and the snack table is pretty respectable too. The DJ plays a couple of fast songs for each slow song, and Will sips a cup of punch and nibbles on cookies and stands by the bleachers watching his best friend and-- whatever El is to him, he's still working on defining that-- dance together. Then the music changes again, the first chords of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" split the air, and Mike's eyes find Will's immediately. He motions Will over, and Will doesn't even think about demurring, dropping the empty cup on the bleachers and coming close only to find how easily Mike and El turn to him, opening into the points of a triangle effortlessly. El moves unselfconsciously, not knowing how to dance but figuring out quickly that it's fun to move to the music. Mike's almost as uninhibited as she is, not caring what anyone besides El thinks, and she's not critical. Will feels very aware of how he moves next to them, so used to dancing alone in his room to the mix tapes Jonathan makes for him, but they're both so happy to have him there that it doesn't matter what anyone else in the gym might think.

As soon as the Clash ends, David Bowie begins. Will hesitates and goes to turn away, and Mike catches him by the wrist before he gets very far.

"No," he says. "You have to stay. We _are_ heroes." The look he gives Will is almost exactly the same look he's been giving El. Every strand of the tangled feeling in Will's chest vibrates like a plucked guitar string, and he stays. Mike doesn't let go of Will's wrist but reaches for El's hand with his free hand, and El holds her other hand out to Will, and the three of them dance together, knowing that they already are heroes, not just for one day, either. Will sings along-- how could he not? He's so full of feeling that it has to escape somehow, and he knows all the words. El's watching him instead of Mike, fascinated by his singing, and Mike's hand is hot and a little sweaty around Will's wrist, and Will feels like he might float away if they weren't holding him securely between them.

The next song is Madonna, and when Will gives both El and Mike a tug toward the refreshments table they come willingly. El's never had punch before and her eyes widen when she tastes it. "So sweet," she says, and drinks it quickly. Will refills her cup and Mike offers her a sugar cookie and the three of them find a place to stand against the wall, taking a breather from the dance.

"You look really, really pretty tonight," Mike tells El, and she beams at him.

"Don't you think she looks like an elfin princess? She should be part of our campaign," Will says, and Mike's eyes widen.

"Yeah! What do you think, El? Do you want to learn to play?"

"Yes," she says, looking from Mike to Will and back again. "I like playing with you. And dancing. This is fun."

"It's the most fun I've ever had at a dance," Mike says, and Will snorts.

"It's the only dance you've gone to."

"It's your first dance too."

"It's all of our first dances," Will says, and El nods in satisfaction and wraps a hand around each boy's wrist.

"Good. Let's dance more." She doesn't seem to care that it's a slow song on when she pulls them back onto the dance floor. Will shoots a nervous glance at Mike, wondering if he should hang back and let them dance, but El just gives him a little tug when he hesitates and Mike smiles and shrugs and holds out a hand to Will.

It's weird, trying to slow dance with two other people. It doesn't seem right to keep at arm's length like they were dancing to the upbeat songs, but it also doesn't seem right or possible for them all to be close. El looks between them again, back and forth, and drops their hands in favor of putting her arms around both their shoulders, pulling them closer to her and each other. Will giggles nervously, not entirely sure what to do-- he puts a hand on El's waist instinctively, and he wants to do the same to Mike but he hesitates again. Anyone in the gym can see them, and Will's already been called gay and weird enough times but he doesn't want people throwing those words at Mike with the same frequency.

Mike looks at Will, head tilted just a bit, and then he smiles and sets his hand on Will's back, pulling them into the same triangle they'd been dancing as before, only closer, now, side to side to side. They sway together, both boys letting El guide the motion, until the song changes again, back to something peppy, and instead of letting them go El pulls them both closer into a hug.

“This is good,” she says, and Will lets himself lean into the arms of his two favorite people and appreciate how right she is. When she lets him go this time, he doesn’t think about leaving El and Mike alone again, happy to stay right there where he knows he’s wanted to be.

They keep dancing, two more fast songs and a slow one, three fast ones, and then the DJ announces that this is the last song and Will holds back a sigh knowing that it’s almost over. He spends that last dance trying to figure out what, exactly, he’s feeling-- trying to sort out the tangle of emotions filling his chest into something that makes a little more sense. The feelings of hurt and jealousy from when he’d been standing on the sidelines have evaporated, to his surprise. He looks from El to Mike, where they’re holding each other, but they’re both holding onto him, too. 

If this is what love feels like, Will thinks, it’s no wonder people in love act like they’re crazy. It feels so big and complicated and incomprehensible inside him, and he wonders how much of that is because his feelings for Mike and for El are different-but-the-same, and you’re really only supposed to have feelings like that for one person at a time. El’s living in his house but she doesn’t feel like a sister, Mike’s his friend but he doesn’t feel like just a friend, and Will has no idea what he’s doing but he knows he doesn’t want it to stop.

The song ends. The overhead lights come on. All the kids in the gym start moving to retrieve their coats, but Mike pulls El and Will in the opposite direction, down the hall toward the restrooms. Will’s not sure where they’re going, but they stop just around the bend of the hall, out of view from the gym. 

“I’m really glad that we got to do this,” Mike says. “I’m glad you both came.”

“Of course we both came,” Will says, and Mike raises a brow at him. “Well, El couldn’t have come by herself.”

“Friends stick together,” El says, but then she turns a puzzled look on Mike. “Are we friends? You said that friends don’t go to dances. And brothers don’t go to dances. So Will isn’t a brother and you’re not a friend?”

“No-- not exactly,” Mike says, and now it’s Will’s turn to arch a brow. “You go to dances with people you like more than friends.”

“What’s more than friends?” El asks. 

“People you love,” Will says, and El thinks about that for a moment before she leans in and presses her lips to Will’s. Will freezes, and El turns and does the same thing to Mike, who looks absolutely dumbfounded. The boys share a wide-eyed glance, and El frowns slightly.

“Bad?”

“No,” Mike says. “Not bad. Just… surprising.”

“You go to dances with people you love,” El says. “I came to the dance with you. We’re all here together.”

“She’s not wrong,” Will says, and when Mike looks at him Will leans in with his heart in his throat and kisses Mike as quickly and innocently as El had. Mike goes absolutely still, staring at Will like he’s never seen him before, and there’s an apology on Will’s lips that doesn’t make it out when Mike finally smiles.

“This is weird,” Mike says.

“We are weird,” Will says, proud of it. “El’s weird and I’m weird and you’re weird so this is weird.”

“But it’s good,” El says firmly. “This is good.”

“Yeah, it’s good,” Mike agrees. “We’re good.”


End file.
